Clinician Engagement Strategy 2021-2024 Survey

Metro South Health Strategy and Planning recently asked for your feedback on Clinician Engagement. Opportunities to share your thoughts, insights and experience were sought via an online survey, workshops and interviews.

We could be doing better and there is room for improvement. You said:

About the ‘strategy’ document

• We need to use language that can be understood by everyone.
• You prefer a short 1-2-page summary as a reference rather than a large formal document.
• You want us to provide supporting materials to help you action the strategy.
• We need to increase awareness of engagement initiatives and supporting resources.

Your ‘engagement’ expectations

• Engagement pathways need to be simple, easy, more frequent and more inclusive (including frontline staff). Current pathways are difficult to navigate, you do not know who to speak to and how to access decision makers.
• You do not want engagement limited to top-down, on a need to know basis with the same set of people (i.e. targeted at the Executive / management level).
• You want to see the Metro South Health Senior Leadership Team at your facility / department and have opportunities to talk to them. 
• You want transparency in decision making and you want to understand how decisions are made, with clear accountability in our people and our system.
• You want proactive and relevant messages, that utilise our existing range of communication channels to better reach you (i.e. staff forums, events etc), rather than relying on all-staff broadcast emails.
• You want feedback on decisions made and what’s to come next.

Support we can offer to reduce engagement challenges  

• We need to better support you to find the time to be involved in relevant engagement initiatives. 
• We need to bridge the gap, where facilities feel siloed and disconnected with each other.
• We need to ensure community health service clinicians are part of engagement activities. 
• We need to develop relationships and visit you so there are opportunities for discussion on matters that are best discussed in person.
• You note middle management is the critical point for information sharing for both above and below levels, having outcomes dependent on their understanding and transfer of information. We need to provide more support and guidance to our middle managers.
   

About future engagement process improvements recommendations

• You recommend this strategy be for all staff, rather than exclusively for clinicians.
• You want opportunities to bring you together to develop understanding of the different people and roles throughout our health service (hospitals and community services).
• You recommend we be more proactive in the timing/sequencing of initiatives to ensure all relevant staff can participate, one example is for our junior medical staff be consulted (in line with the rest of the organisation) prior to the end of their rolling contracts.
• You recommend a cultural shift for how clinicians should see themselves as part of the wider health service, outside of their specific department/facility – based on the consumer journey through health care and recognising the continual care ongoing in the community.
• You want increased training / education for decision making at the organisational level (topics include management, continuous improvement and business literacy).
• You suggest we develop personas to assist relating to and understanding of the diversity of our workforce throughout our health service (hospitals and community services).
• You suggest we could do better by centralising certain functions, having facilities working together in partnership (topics include health and safety).

Your feedback will be incorporated into the new Clinician Engagement Strategy, a detailed Action Plan, as well as supporting resources and tools to more effectively encourage your engagement and participation in the future with Metro South Health, and each other, about health services planning.

What’s to come?

Metro South Health Strategy and Planning will develop a new draft Clinician Engagement Strategy, a detailed Action Plan and supporting resources based on your feedback and contemporary evidence-based literature.

You will continue to be involved in conversations about our progress over the coming period, prior to the launch of the new Clinician Engagement Strategy. The dates are currently under review in consideration of the resources and impact of COVID-19.

For more information – please contact Matthew McCabe, Principal Engagement Officer, Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives, Metro South Health Strategy and Planning  via email at: metro_south_engagement@health.qld.gov.au